My Educational Plans

Hello everybody, I felt that I needed to make this post so that what I say here can help stay accountable for my aggressive plans for my advanced education. As well as giving a brief explanation of how I can afford these plans. First of all I will let everybody know that I am currently enrolled at American Military University working towards my bachelors in Psychology. I have already completed 60 credit hours towards this degree. The military has a program called Tuition Assistance. Basically, this program gives every service member $4,500.00 every fiscal year to go to college, currently this covers about 6 classes a year. Which in most circumstances is fine because it is normally hard for me to do more than 6 classes a year, mainly because of my family, and work commitments. AMU has a cool program for its military students, because they have a book grant that provides all my books to me for free. I can keep them throw them away or sell them back when I am finished with the class. It also is completely web based. I can log in at anytime and check my classes or look at my academic plan to see what classes I have left. I currently have a 3.6 GPA, so I feel pretty smart right now.
My longterm plan is to apply for the Army's Physicians Assistant Program. If I am accepted to this program I will go to school in San Antonio for one year, and then I will do one year of clinicals at an Army post of my choosing. After graduation I will recieve a Bachelors and a Masters Degree from the University of Arizona. I will be a 1st Luitenant and have a rapid promotion to Captain in 18 months. My service commitment after graduation will be 4 years. So it should line right up with my 20 years of service. To apply for this program I have to have a couple of prerequisites. These are Chemistry 1 & 2, Anatomy and Physiology 1 & 2, 60 credit hours at an accredited college, and finally an SAT score of 1450, with a math and reading comprehinsion score greater that 1000 and a score of 450 or higher in each group. So my plan is to complete the SAT before I leave Afghanistan, the Army will pay for one SAT test, so I want to get it right the first time, so there will be no money out of pocket if possible. Then when I get back to Campbell I will enroll at Austin Peay University and take the Chem. 1 & 2, as well as the Anatomy and Physiology classes.
My super long term plan is once I am about 2 years from retirement I will begin my doctorate in Clinical Psychology. I won't go into detail on that one yet because it is pretty far away for now. So now everyone should know what my intentions are for my education, short and long term. Things that I think I will need to be successful are patience, determination, support from loved ones, an SAT study book for 2009, and a pinch of luck.

Thanks for reading our blog


Morgan

Morgan and I on our Anniversary..

This is crappy quality but I wanted to share. I had to take a picture of a picture because my scanner is not working. This is us right before mogan deployed and on our 7 year anniversary. I love this picture.

My Little Fish..

I just wanted to share a picture or two of Ryan Chillin out in the bath tub today. He thinks he can really swim. LOL

Ryan's New Bed

Well after searching for a BIG BOY bed for Ryan I have finally found one. I have over time been buying pieces of a bedding set that I LOVED. It matches what Ryan had on his crib as a baby. Now all of my searching is over and his bed and bedding looks great. Here is my babys new bed. He is getting so big. O and he will be sleeping in the crib tonight. I want him to get used to it being in the room before putting him in it. He is not good with change.

Fallen Hero

A 101st Airborne Division Soldier died Dec. 24 when his Combat Outpost came under enemy attack in Patkia, Afghanistan. Corporal Charles P. Gaffney, 42, of Phoenix, Ariz. was an infantryman assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). Gaffney entered the Army August 2006 and arrived at Fort Campbell November 2007. Gaffney’s awards and decorations include: Army Commendation Medal; Army Achievement Medal; National Defense Service Medal; Global War on Terrorism Service Medal; Overseas Service Ribbon; Armed Forces Reserve Medal; Combat Infantry Badge and Weapons Qualification: M4-rifle, expert. He is survived by his wife, Latticia, and daughters Cara and Mia, all of Caldwell, Idaho; and father Charles Gaffney, of Phoenix, Ariz. A memorial service for the fallen Soldier will be held in Afghanistan. Fort Campbell holds an Eagle Remembrance Ceremony the second Wednesday of each month.

This is the soldier that we couldn't help, everyone put his family in your prayers.

Lost but not forgotten

Morgan

January 9th Black Friday

Well everybody, so far in my flying career I have been relativly blessed. I've never had to fly in really crapy weather, I've never been shot at, and I have never had to experience any major emergencies while flying. On black Friday the majority of that all changed, luckly I wasn't shot at and I think that was because the weather was so bad no one wanted to leave their caves and houses to shoot at anything. We got called on a priority medivac because a first sergeant in Gardez dropped a seventy pound weight on his foot, so he had a torn metatarcel extreme swelling, and a bottle of pills to kill the pain. We were supposed to pick him up and bring him back here to get an x-ray. Well we started up and got clearance to take the active runway for take off. As we picked up to a forward hover at ten feet we were turning on to the active, and I immediatley got a Master Caution followed by the engine out tone in my helmet. It took about 3 seconds to figure out what was going on and I simply landed the aircraft on the active and taxied it out of the way so other planes could land. The engine stopped because it wasn't getting any fuel. I even had the boost pumps on luckly our Maintenance Test Pilot finally declared the aircraft unsafe and told sikorsky that they owed us a new aircraft. We immediatly switched to another aircraft and departed to pick up the patient. By the time we picked him up and got fuel the weather had deteriorated greatly. We couldn't get back of the mountains where we came through earlier so we went south still no joy. As we were landing back at the FOB where we picked up the patient it began to snow. So we turned on our Engine Anti-Ice and pitot heat. We took off again hoping to find a break in the weather, but we were turned around by HQ because they said we didn't have approval to fly anymore based on the weather. So we turned around to head back, about half way back it began snow heavily and visibility came down to about a half mile. In the process we lost sight of themedivac bird, because we turned to avoid some really bad visibility. I turned on our rotor de-ice and got a T/R de-ice fail caution, which means that the deice capability wasn't working on our tail rotor. The deice system on a black hawk basically works like this. It picks up unusual vibrations from the blades, this vibration is caused by ice forming on the surface. When it reaches a certain vibration it heats up the blades, and melts the ice enough to where the ice is thrown off of the blade from the motion of the blades. It repeats this process as necessary. If iced had formed on my tail rotor, I could have possibly lost directional control of the aircraft. With this being said I was a little worried, and I think I had a piece of the seat cushion sucked into my butt crack, because it was puckering. Luckly, we made it back to the FOB without incident and immediatly shut down. We ended up spending the night and returned the next day. All in all it was a pretty crappy day, it just goes to show that you never know whats going to happen the next day, and that weather in Afghanistan is very volatile. I love all you guys and miss you, stay safe I know I am trying to.

Morgan

WOOL LONGIES!

So with morgan being gone I have nothing better to do than research cool baby stuff. (Well taking care of the other kids but this is way more fun, LOL) So the newest find is Longies and Shorties that are diaper covers/pants/shorts. How freaking awsome is that? I really want a pair of Monster or Sock Monkey Longies to bring Nick home in. I am so in love with these. Kryste you might not want to look because you are going to love them too! Thank you to all my Aviation Sweethearts friends who decided to do cloth diapers and posted about them. Thanks to you all I am going to die by the hands of Morgan becuase I am totally in love with all this expensive stuff. LOL Here are some examples made my a company called Cranky Pants.

Guess whats new around here....

So Ryan is I would say officially POTTY TRAINED! I would say since he has had only one accident in 4 days. He is pooping and peeing in the potty and even wearing undies out in public. I am sure that it will take a while to get him potty trained at night time but I am not even worried about that.

I'm jumping for joy! This was my only major deployment goal and we have already accomplished it. Well he has accomplished it. He has done this pretty much on his very own!! He was so ready and will cry to wear his undies even at nap. He is not even 2 and a half yet.

YEAH RYAN!!!!

OMG Look how cute these are!!!

I am turning into a complete freak. Look how cute these diapers are!!!

Cloth Diapers

So after many many weeks of freaking out and stressing myself out over what kind of diapers I am going to use I have finally picked one!! I am so excited. I am going to use The Goodmama's brand. You can view them at www.thegoodmama.com . So what is so great about them? Well they are super soft, they fit from 10-35lbs so I will not have to buy new sizes as the baby grows. Down side is the price. They are pretty expensive but worth it. I have done tons of research and these are the diapers for us. They are also having a great sale right now. Buy two get one free. So that brings them out to like 23.00 each. O and did I mention free shipping? O the little things that excite me these days. I'm off to sell a kid to pay for my newest addiction. Cloth diapers!